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[ba-unrev-talk] Four Goals (was)Fwd: [issues] reply to Tony's comment


Paul Werbos, responding to some comments by Tony Judge on the Issues list, 
lists 4 goals,  aiming towards which, in his opinion, are crucial to the 
future.    (01)

>From: "Paul J. Werbos" <pwerbos@nsf.gov>
>
><snip>
>
>In my view, the hope of developing a sustainable global energy system is 
>ESSENTIAL and NECESSARY but very far from SUFFICIENT
>to the hope of achieving global sustainability on earth. Because we have 
>some unique points of leverage and capability related to that
>goal, it is reasonable for us to spend a disproportionately large share of 
>our time on that goal (among others), relative to other goals --
>like water, food, population, war-and-peace and education -- which are 
>equally critical, which merit our very part-time support, but which we cannot
>influence quite as much, at the present time. "We" meaning me and my 
>friend at this moment.
>
>No matter what taxes and quotas and laws and new age prayers to Gaia we 
>can try to invoke... it seems pretty clear that we could
>not achieve a globally sustainably energy system without either radical 
>changes in technology or throwing billions of people into poverty
>or starvation... and I prefer the former.
>
>Assuming we do not accept the billions-more-in-poverty scenarios, a 
>sustainable global energy system must include a web of technologies which
>allows one to meet (at least) four (principal) constraints simultaneously:
>
>(1) An increase in the available supply of energy AS SUCH, from unlimited 
>sources, without a big increase in price;
>
>(2) An increase in the supply of TRANSPORTATION FUEL, also from unlimited 
>sources, without a big increase in price per mile;
>
>(3) Zero net CO2 emission for it all;
>
>(4) The ability to do all this without depending on the use of nuclear 
>power plants in the developing world. (I would not
>use the word "sustainable" to describe what would happen if the 
>availability of nuclear materials and technology were to be
>multiplied a thousand-fold beyond what the creaky status quo already looks 
>like in the developing world.)
>
>It is simply not proven that these constraints can ever be met -- but 
>there are a number of promising options for high-risk
>high-potential research, and there is a clear need for the world to 
>maximize all truly plausible options along these lines.
>There is a huge amount of rhetoric and short-term research whose funders 
>talk about sustainability... but precious little on
>those options which address the hope of really ACHIEVING the four goals. 
>(Some people call it "making progress" to spend
>billions on tweaking gasoline-burning internal combustion engines... but 
>1,000 years of that would not get us to the ultimate
>point we need to aim for. When governments mandate or even just 
>incentivize that sort of thing, they actually reduce
>our chances of making it in the long term, because they distract attention 
>from tehe more radical things we need to be doing.)
>
>Anyway... no need for me to go on TO[O] long on this... someone needs to 
>really attend to the technical nitty-gritty of these
>issues... someone must "take out THAT trash".... ESPECIALLY BECAUSE there 
>has been precious little serious substantive support
>for what really needs to be done. And a lot of that requires dialogue with 
>the folks who are critical to developing that
>technology.
>
><snip>
>Best of luck,
>
>     Paul W.    (02)

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